Brinksmanship – Postal Service stops funding employee pensions.

Photo above – screencap from Kevin Costner’s least watchable film, The Postman (1997). He fights a rampaging lion and fascist militia leaders who suffer from erectile dysfunction, in order to deliver phone bills and gutter guard ads to America's survivors, without pay.

Is this a stunt, or something real? “No pension contributions until congress gives us more money!” (See link below).

If a corporation tried this (ignoring pension rules) some chief financial officer or CEO would be perp walked immediately into federal court. As of this writing Postmaster General David Steiner (formerly CEO of the billion-dollar corporation Waste Management) is still kicking back at his LA mansion.

Let’s be fair. Steiner has been the job less than a year. He’s not responsible for the $9 billion post office deficit last year. He’s not responsible for the decision to purchase $10 billion worth of cartoonish electric mail trucks at $100,000 each. Steiner is probably just a guy who wants to keep his name out of the headlines, To see that mail carriers get paid and come to work. And not go down in history as the guy who sat on the snail throne when the mail delivery empire died.

But cancelling all pension contributions? Feisty. Please understand - Mr. Steiner is not cancelling the monthly pension checks sent to retirees. Just the new federal contributions into their pension fund.

Private sector companies – like IBM and Exxon – which still have “normal” pensions are outliers. Almost all of corporate America pivoted away from pensions years ago and now offers employee 401K plans instead. These are called defined contribution plans. Your employer kicks in a fixed amount annually (say (5%) instead to the 401K. Then workers who can't even balance their checkbooks flail about trying to manage their stock investments, and pray there isn't a wartime market crash or bitcoin induced crisis. 401K plans now rule because old school retirement costs were rising exponentially faster than corporate earnings. Because of the number of retirees.

Which is also happening with the Social Security Trust fund. Benefits keep growing faster than the government’s ability to fund them. If your mom is retired and still alive, that's half her monthly income. There are too many retirees, but not enough workers to tax.

I expect the Postal Service endgame will be something along the lines of: “It’s just $9 billion. Congress will give us money from some rainy-day fund. The nation is spending $1 trillion annually just on interest for the US debt. Nobody really cares . . . “

Weigh in now, loyal readers. Is the best way to solve this crisis-du-jour by raising the cost of a stamp to $1.00? Hiking income taxes to subsize those giant windshield EV mail trucks? Or just adding this to the national debt and hoping no one remembers?

The next government shutdown over spending might not take place until October 2026. By then politicians will be foaming at the mouth to win the midterm election and they will promise or say anything. But we won’t hear a peep about the cost of stamps.

I’m just sayin . . .



https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/usps-temporarily-stops-pension-payments-amid-cash-crisis/ar-AA20x9ph?ocid=BingNewsSerp

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119925/